The great jobs debate over whether Canada will have too many or too few: Don Pittis

As both Canada and the U.S. waited to see Friday's new jobs numbers, the Canadiangovernment seemed to be takingsides ina great jobs debate over whether we'll need more workers infuture orfewer.

Typical of the divisive era we're living in, the two views are polar opposites.

More workers needed

The Feds insistthat, as the country's population ages, Canada will be in desperateneed of a growing number of workers to replace retiring baby boomers, thus justifying about a million new immigrants over thenext three years.

Meanwhile, several experts on the future of workare equally insistent that jobs are about to start disappearing. They claimmachines controlled by powerful new formsofartificialintelligence areabout to steal anywhere from one thirdto one halfofjobs.

Today's employment data came down on the side of Canada's immigration department, with almost 90,000 full-time jobs created. The U.S. posted similarly solid numbers, afterpeople went back to work in October followingsummer hurricane damage.

Chooseyour numbers

One month's jobs numbers won'ttell us much about the long term trend, although, at its most basic level, the math should be simple. The hard part is deciding which numbers to use.

"Five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035 and we have fewer people working to support seniors and retirees," said Canada's Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussenthis week.

Hussenlaid out the math.In 1971, there were 6.6 people of working age for each senior,Hussensaid.But by2012, that ratio had goneto 4.2 workers for each senior,and projections showit willbe a ratio 2 to 1 by 2036.

The real question is how many of those supportworkers will need to be replaced. Experts say robots are coming for many of the jobs currently done by humans.

Robots pose fundamental economic threat

This week, Horizons ETFs Management Canada launched the world's first global exchange traded fund managed completely by artificial intelligence on the Toronto Stock Exchange, prompting the business news service Bloomberg to release a video titled Robots Are Coming forJobs on Wall Street.

An article inthe latest issue of Mother Jones titledYou Will Lose Your Job to a Robot and Sooner Than You Think, predicts half ofjobs in industrialized, capitalist countrieswill be gone in 20 years.

"For the vast majority of jobs, work as we know it will come steadily to an end between about 2025 and 2060," says the article.

That's no surprise to Silicon Valley entrepreneur and futuristMartin Ford, author ofRise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.He did a TED talk on the subjectearlier this year, and predicts that artificial intelligence will create joblessness across all industries.

Ford'sbiggest worry is something that will kick in long before AI takes all the jobs. His concern is that as unemployment begins to rise, we will lose not just jobs, but alsoconsumers with moneyto spend.

"We'll face a fundamental threat to the market economy," says Ford.

But if you thought futurologists were all on the same side on the robot issue,you would be wrong. A fun story in Wired magazine this week asks the question: "Who's ready to put their kids on a self-driving school bus?"

Oddly, I'd had a similar thought myself before seeing the Wired report, leading me to snap the photo at the top of this story.

Yes, companies like Waymoand Tesla really are on the verge of giving ustrucks and taxis that can operate on public roads without a human driver. That mighthave saved lives on Ontario's highway 400 this week.

But watching the seen-it-all school bus drivers ushering their boisterous chargesoff in front of Roy Thomson Hall, I wondered whether out-of-control students would listen to a robot driver if it yelled at them to stop throwing sandwichesor threatenedto pull overif they didn't stop fighting.

Despite plenty of science fiction stories about machines that teach, it's hard to imagine humans being completely phased out at any level of education, from pre-school to post-graduate, even 60 years from now. That is, if we don't want to turn the next generation into soulless automatons.

Certainly stories this week from across thecountry about special needs kids not getting enough human attention reminds uswe could do with more teachers, not fewer. As withall the other human services society could use, from more massages tomore physiotherapy and better care of the elderly, the problemis notfinding the need, but finding the money to pay for it.

Job quality matters

And this is the issue for the million ofimmigrants that Canada will be absorbing over next three years.

If well-payingWall Streetjobs, mortgage brokerjobs, andhuman resourcesjobs, as well asmany other kinds of workare already disappearing, we must seriously think about what kinds of employmentthere will be for a million new immigrants, especially those without high-level skills and Canadian language proficiency.

As we see in each month'sunemployment figures, the absolute number of jobs is often less important than the quality of those jobs. It will do Canada no favours to take a million immigrants and toss them into an economy divided by stark inequality.

If the only jobs available to alower-skilled immigrants are as menial asmaking up beds in a hotelorcaregivingat minimum wage, they won't generate nearly enough economic clout to support 5 million newly retired Canadians in the style to which they've grown accustomed.

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